thefore Spock seeeing Nero with the tatoos didn't necessarily happen minutes after the destruction of Romulus.

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Spock flat out stated that he was intercepted "as [he] began [his] return trip". It would take major effort to invent a reason for him to linger long enough that the events of Countdown, or even the act of tattooing a few foreheads, could take place. Or then we would have to assume that Spock made a deliberate and possibly malicious lie to hide whatever happened at that putative "lost hour" - not a mere simplification of the events.

Sure, Spock can be deceiving the audience. But if we assume he is not, the number of contradictions is actually reduced, in a nice cascade event that eliminates complications: Nero meets Spock right at the shallow tomb of Romulus, which then is also the spot where the supernova blew and was stopped by Spock's red matter, no FTL wave of destruction need be postulated, etc.

On the other hand,

Simply accepting that the novels, comics, episodes and films all have their own subtly different ideas about the Trekverse.

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Sure. But Trek in itself doesn't really amount to much. It's the self-consistent fictional reality that it erects that gives it the necessary extra dose of pixie dust. And the episodes and films make for a fairly good fictional reality on their own; the novels do it on their own; but put together, the results are quite abysmal...

The reasons are pretty obvious, too. Aired material is cross-checked to at least some degree when made, partly because it's an expensive endeavor that not only needs the good rep, but can also afford it. Written material is cross-checked on its own. Yet written vs. aired material is only checked in one direction: nobody in the aired side bothers with keeping tabs on everything that happens in the written realm.

Timo Saloniemi

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Uh, you're missing my point. There's no reason not to believe that Romulus was destroyed hours or even days before Spock reached the supernova thereby giving Nero plenty of time while Spock was still en route to the supernova to be tatooed. Remember the events shown in the mind meld aren't being shown in real time.

As for me suggesting Spock Prime left stuff out of the mind meld, I wasn't suggesting it was for some nefarious reason. My thought is he did it to save time and prevent Kirk from asking unnecessary questions. Kirk didn't even really believe Spock was Spock at the point of the mind meld and if Spock related anything resembling what happened in Countdown Kirk likely would have had tons of questions or even blamed Spock and refused his assistance. Time was of the essence. Nero had to be stopped before more planets were destroyed. Spock Prime simply didn't have the time to get into those things.

Then again, Countdown technically isn't canon so no explanation is needed. However, this is an easy explanation for anything that seems to be inconsistent should Countdown be made canon in the future, as I hope it will be.

I didn't ever feel the need for an explanation, but I didn't mind the one they came up with in Enterprise. However, just as viruses don't usually infect an entire population, I would expect A) that smooth and ridged headed Klingons are around in this period and B) that there are enough of each that the absence of either is no big deal. This is really a tiny point over which to quibble.

I'm more concerned with the pic of the loony with the pierced ANKLES floating around Facebook a few weeks ago. Holy shit that looked painful. To say nothing of Prince Alberts.

Klingon forehead piercings are tame in comparison to what the people of Earth are doing.

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I'm not familiar with the pierced ankles pic but the Prince Albert stuff ...
Unless "Klingon forehead ridges piercings" does not refer to the upper head.

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Another reason why the males of a species (any species), need to take a moment to remember that there is never enough blood in the body to accommodate rational thinking, by both 'heads' at the same time.

I agree with all those who say the 'forehead issue' has been blown out of all proportion over the years. IMO it's clear that the TOS Klingons may not have had ridges, and the 'new' TMP look was a retcon, yes. But it was one which we were all obviously supposed to apply retroactively (ie, that was what Klingons 'always' looked like). The comment in "Trials And Tribbilations" was clearly a joke. It was the production team poking fun at the fact that they obviously had to confront why Worf's makeup and that of the 'original' Klingons in the archive footage look so different. It speaks volumes that while the DS9 team were apparently tempted to follow up on it, they ultimately decided it was a narrative dead-end and just dropped the entire subject.

Enterprise obviously had a bet each way. Their explanation was very clever, but ultimately I would hope that the makers of "Into Darkness" are smart enough to imply the augment virus (perhaps through use of un-ridged background Klingons) without making it a plot point. After all, why shouldn't Klingons have ridged and un-ridged? Adds a bit of diversity to their overall look.

I, for one, thought that the explanation in Enterprise was brilliant. Had "Trials and Tribble-ations" never acknowledged that the Klingons didn't resemble Worf, I would have accepted (perhaps a bit grudgingly ) that the Klingons always had ridges, even though I know the full story of how the original makeup came about. (*) But since they did hang a lampshade on it, Enterprise's explanation works well.

(* - For those who don't know, the story, as I read it, was that nobody had really put any thought into what Klingons should look like. So John Colicos and Fred Phillips chatted about it when Colicos showed up for his first day of shooting on "Errand of Mercy," and together they came up with the Genghis Khan look.)

[Effing HUMUNGOUS hotlinked picture converted to link. Images posted inline must be hosted on your own webspace or image-sharing account, and not leeched from a site belonging to someone else. They should also be of dimensions appropriate to the forum page; filesize for a still image should be well under 1 Mb. - M']

It's not only gigantic in dimension, but the 8.5 Mb filesize is killing the page-load time. Way, way too big.

Also hotlinked, so I'm converting it to a link. What you need to do when you post pictures as inline images is make sure they're hosted on your own image-sharing account (most of these are free and also include basic image editors to resize, crop, etc.)

If you don't have an image-sharing account or don't wish to host the image, post a link to a page which contains that image.

Canon or not, they're still part of Trek lore. Think of it like a writer of a new Batman movie not just watching prior Batman movies, but reading lots of old Batman comics too. To see the different ways the character and setting have been interpreted over the years. It's the same thing with Trek.

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This is the way I like to view all of the different ALT-timelines in Trek, like DC's Multi-verse. To go off topic for a second, the plot of Turtles Forever, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 25th anniversary cartoon, presented all of the different takes on the Turtles (live action movies, Anime, 80's cartoon, 2003 cartoon, graphic novels, CGI movie, etc, etc) as ALL canon, but canon from varying dimensions. Thats definately an interesting thing to consider for Trek also.